Parents and Professional Wrestling

Guest Author - Vance R. Rowe

Too often we hear about children being hurt and even killed as they imitate the moves of their favorite professional wrestlers and in my opinion, parents cannot remain blameless in the wake of these tragedies.

Parents need to sit down with their children as they watch professional wrestling and play the many different pro wrestling video games that are out there. Parents need to talk with their children about the moves that the pro wrestlers do and how they are rigidly trained to avoid serious injuries but even these specially trained athletes do make mistakes and do get hurt. Some get hurt very seriously and some even die.

One wrestler in particular, Owen Hart, fell to his death at a WWE pay-per-view event called “Over the Edge” in 1999. Wrestling as a superhero type character, Owen Hart was supposed to be lowered to the ring by a cable from about sixty feet in the air when something happened with the rigging and Owen free fell from about fifty feet in the air and his head apparently hit the top rope or one of the padded turnbuckles, killing him almost instantly. Fans in attendance at the Kemper Arena that night said they thought it was a doll or a dummy of sorts and that the WWE was playing tricks on them or adding to the story line of the Blazer. The viewers at home never saw the fall as they were watching a video package of Blue Blazer highlights and the cameras then panned around the audience while EMT’s and trainers worked on Hart. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital. Jim Ross, a television commentator for the WWE had the dubious feat of letting the television audience know what had happened and what the ultimate result was.

In 2009, a young boy of nine years old jumped off of the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building. A friend of the boy said that he was imitating a move of his favorite wrestler, Jeff Hardy. The boy apparently attempted a “Swanton Bomb” from the roof of the building and even wore a homemade parachute. It was said that he was imitating Jeff Hardy in his favorite video game: Smackdown vs. Raw 2009.

However, nowhere in the video game does Jeff Hardy jump off of a building nor does he wear any kind of parachute in the video game. Parents need to talk with their children and let them know that they can die or become permanently injured if they imitate the moves performed by the superstars of professional wrestling.